8.10.2009

Well, not recycled, exactly, but just the best I can come up with while living a life that consists mostly of staring forlornly at unsold furniture and poking the wood filler I used on the apartment's backdoor and wondering when it's going to dry.

It's possibly this move-ennui that led me to turn into Raymond Carver during a company creative exercise (as opposed to the time I turned into Ruth Bader Ginsburg during a company basketball game). This month's creative exercise involved drawing a character, setting, time period, and plot then taking 15 minutes to write a story about it. This should have been perfect. I mean, I've read stories. I drew:

New motherCity parkJust after a fightSomeone has been embarrassed

I don't know, maybe there's something funny there--everyone else did something funny--but instead I spent those 15 orange juice and pastry fueled moments writing the following cheery piece. I then took pictures of what I wrote because I'm taking pictures of everything these days:

If history is any guide, I will now attempt to sell these notebook pages over the Internet before ultimately deciding they aren't really worth $10 and dropping them off at the Goodwill. They will then be sold and worn as a Halloween costume by some graduate student. When asked what he's dressed as, the graduate student will say, "A pretentious, flawed attempt at passe minimalism written by someone wondering whether a co-worker is going to eat that entire cinnamon roll or if he might go halfsies if offered a set of matching coffee and end tables."